The Caveat.

Washing down another pill with a cold pull off the bottle of cheap beer I bought myself. I've been drinking for three days, trying to write but being pulled like a siren song to my instruments.
Responsibilities and loyalties fall by the wayside as I fuzzily pluck at strings.

Drinking isn't a habit, but more of a bandaid on an arterial wound when I am like this, wound tight like an expensive watch. My brain ripples and quivers, hyperaware and intrusive. I pick up on the snippets, keep ee contact.
I wrought discomfort, and I wanted to. This thin tan blonde with watery blue eyes, and a smaller amount of self-confidence than will be needed to wrangle me. Her eagerness to please was obvious; her divination of my past sure. She smiled kindly, so kindly, as if she had coaxed these things from me.

But I know the clinical scanning of a file that she did. Her opinion is not yet formed, but she fears. I make her nervous. And I like it. 

A New Shackle, Shiny and Laughing.

I don't fear age.
I fear infirmity. The shaking of limbs, the creaking of joints, the pain in knobby hands papery and rheumy. Heaviness and torpor, unbidden.
It terrifies me. Scares me cold to my bones, chilling my marrow. The shaking hands...the apologetic crinkles around the eyes. With a young mind, stilled at ageing by 35.

I cannot abide it. 

Preferably With Sharper Teeth...

How calculating I must seem. Through moans, all silken and breathy. My arching spine, supine from a lucky coincidence. I have dimples in my hips, like Bettie Page. I see the admiration, the quick intake of air.

But none of it is affectation. I am leveled, laid flat and stripped of guises. My chest heaves and my legs tremble but my face stays cool and level as a placid lake.

I cannot say it back, for I do not yet know how I mean it.